S21.E08: Noa Tishby; Andrew Yang; Elissa Slotkin - Real Time With Bill Maher
Wow that pro-Israel guest, she may oppose Netanyahu trying to weaken their Supreme Court but she sounds like him otherwise when it comes to Palestinians and the settlers. Israel is "not perfect." Since the Intifadas -- first was in the late '80s, early '90s and the second was from 2001-2005 -- which side has lost more civilians the Israelis or the Palestinians?
The settlers go around like vigilantes looking for random Palestinians to beat up or kill, under the protection of the IDF.
Recently, an IDF soldier executed a Palestinian journalist.
"Not perfect" but it's the only democracy in the Middle East ...🙄
Then she blathers on about how the Palestinian Authority has given $300 million to suicide bombers. Over what time frame, probably decades because they are not that rich. If we did go to Gaza, we could see how poor they are.
Israel built a wall and for those Palestinian workers who have to enter to do low-skilled labor -- construction, domestic help, etc. -- it's a serious hassle. The tradition of apartheid is alive and well.
HBO aired a very good show called Our Boys, created by an Israeli writer, about settlers kidnapping and killing an innocent Palestinian boy, shows what life is like out in the settlements and nearby Palestinian villages.
Of course for Bill, it's just enough that Israel is the only democracy and all the neighboring Arab countries are against them. Except Israel is the only nuclear power and basically the only superpower in the region.
BTW the protests they were discussing, Israeli reservists are threatening not to serve because of this controversy, which would hurt their security.
Bill is not going to go too hard at guests but it's good to see him calling Yang on his third-party BS. Maybe he learned a lesson from supporting Nader in 2000.
Oh and blaming inflation on the pandemic relief, because both Trump and Biden gave cash to people and businesses to keep the economy up. Well inflation is a GLOBAL problem right now. In fact it's much higher in Europe and really out of control in developing countries, including South America.
They didn't rain buckets of cash on their citizens like the US did. EU gave some relief but nothing like the US.
So why is their inflation so much higher? Well the war and the shutdown of China until a few months ago caused supply chain shortages and people kept paying higher prices for them. Then also the labor shortages, there are over 10 million job openings -- job growth is still strong, you think keeping the economy afloat with money had something to do with that? -- right now and just half the number of job seekers.
Restaurants and other retail businesses can't operate like they did before the pandemic because a lot of front line workers quit or traded up jobs and while these businesses raised wages, they don't find workers as easily, because a lot of people are STILL sick, either Long Covid or an infection causes them to call in sick. Over a million people called in sick every month of 2022, which is like double the normal levels.
So supply chain and worker shortages are common to all countries, whether they gave cash to their citizens and small businesses or not. But US was most generous and yet we have lower inflation than any other industrialized or developing country.
Bill in his old age is like Ronald Reagan, cranky about government handouts and waste. Sure there's waste but in the early months of the pandemic, stock market was plunging and businesses were shut down and then going out of business. That is why Trump and the Republicans supported these aid programs, because in an election year, he didn't want the economy to crash. Also the way they administrated the program they rewarded cronies and wasted a lot of money through incompetence and being duped by wide scale fraud.
You know the last thing the Republicans wanted to do was give money to people who are poor or working class, yet they did it for their own political reasons and of course the well-off benefitted more from these programs.
BTW I noticed the new opening graphics, shows a collage of things Bill always talks about like a smart phone with a face with Xs for eyes showing how bad phones are for mental health and then some funnel dropping tons of syringes and fast food. You know, because fructose corn syrup is the worst and we're too fat, which is why people succumbed to covid, which otherwise is okay.
Took a shot at masks of course during New Rules.
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